Westergaard was still aimed at where the phone had popped up when the gun started going off five feet farther to the right. He ducked down as a bullet strike whined off the rock somewhere not too far below him. When he got back onto the scope again two shots later, he saw the woman twenty feet up the trail, diving behind another rock.
“Oh, so you guys want to play after all?” the killer said with a smile as he blasted away the top edge of the rock the woman had dived behind.
He ditched out the first magazine and had just snapped in another when the return pistol fire started again. One of them hit only ten feet down now. There was a blast of four again. The ranger was walking the rounds up the hill. With a handgun no less!
“Very clever, Ranger Rick,” Westergaard said.
He waited and when the pistol fire started up the third time, he ignored it and looked up the trail as the female agent ran out from behind cover again. He slid a bead on the woman’s running back and gently squeezed the sleek springy euro trigger.
The butt of the gun kicked into his shoulder as the round drilled a neat hole through the top part of the yellow F on her FBI raid jacket. She ran on for three more strides and then went down sprawling, arms out and headfirst, like a base runner trying to steal second.
“You’re out!” the killer said as he shot out the casing.
When he sighted back on the ranger’s position, he had stopped firing. When the Glock appeared again at the same spot above the rock twenty seconds later, it was right in the center of the reticle.
He squeezed the trigger. The handgun along with a spray of blood went airborne.
There was a long pause before he heard the ranger’s unholy scream.
“Finally,” Westergaard said, rolling the kinks out of his neck as he stood with the rifle.
He clambered over some rocks to his right for a hundred yards and lay down and got the attached bipod set and sighted down again.
He could see the ranger there now completely exposed, clutching at his blown-apart hand.
He couldn’t get a good head shot because of a pesky jutting rock, but he was able to quickly shoot him once and then twice high in the chest.
“Game, set, match,” Westergaard mumbled as he watched the ranger’s arms drop.
As the ranger bled out on the stone, the killer stood and gave him the two-finger-over-the-right-eye Boy Scout salute.
“Least you tried, brother,” he said.
Who does that anymore these days?
It took the killer less than five minutes to scoop his brass and pack his kit and another twenty to clamber down the stones to where the three dead men lay splattered across the clearing.
He fished the truck keys from the ranger’s bloody khaki pants and found the cell phone and bagged it. He thought about things and took the man’s wallet and badge. Then he went to the others and took their wallets and credentials, as well.
If this doesn’t blow a lot of minds, he thought to himself with a giddy giggle as he tucked everything away into his knapsack.
“What in the hell?” he said, halting immediately as he came up level on the part of the trail where the female agent had gone down.
She wasn’t there.
He ran over to where there was a huge red ink blot splat on the rocks and quickly tracked the bloody drag trail through the dust to where the trail fell off above the stream.
No, he thought, looking down at the trees and water far below. The crazy agent had jumped!
“Damn, damn, damn,” he said as he searched the evergreens and white water with the rifle’s scope.
He couldn’t see her. He passed a hand through his hair as he lowered the rifle. Now he would have to go down there.
He checked his watch.
He didn’t have time for this.
No, no, he thought after a minute. Calm down. Think, moron. It had to be what? A five-story drop? He had probably heart shot her anyway. Nicked the aorta. Hell, with 250 grain .338 Lapua Magnum boat tail that traveled about a thousand yards a second, nicking a toenail usually did the trick.
He looked down at the roiling water, then up at the hovering peaks, then down at the water again.
Get real. She was dead. They were all dead.
“Get moving,” Westergaard said, finally shouldering the strap of the rifle as he turned.